Roskomnadzor Blokir OKX Because Considered The Spread Of Non-Relying Social Information

OKX, sponsors Manchester City football clubs and McLaren car racing. (photo: @okx)

JAKARTA - The OKX crypto exchange website was blocked in Russia by government media monitoring service Roskomnadzor, on October 4. The agency told the TASS news agency that the website was blocked at the request of the Attorney General's Office due to the unreliable spread of social information in financial information.

Roskomnadzor told local news outlet RBC that OKX has published information related to financial pyramid activities, as well as information about providing financial services by people who do not have the right to provide them under Russian law. Although the website is blocked in Russia, the site remains accessible freely via VPN (virtual private network).

According to other local media reports, OKX's Russian-language exchange channel administration stated, We do not recommend using VPNs when accessing OKX as this will trigger our risk control and could lead to the blocking of our accounts.

OKX, which was founded in China and is currently based in the Seychelles, has not complied with Western sanctions against Russia. Recently, they also reportedly failed to respond to a request by South Korean authorities to freeze accounts linked to co-founder Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, and are known for sponsoring Manchester City football clubs and McLaren car racing.

Similar website blocking has happened before and has been successfully opposed in Russian courts. Binance was blocked in Russia between September 2020 and January 2021 before regional courts overturned Roskomnadzor's decision.

Russia also blocked six crypto news websites in 2020, but at least one site, Bits.media, could lift the blocking a week later due to district court decisions, although still on the agency's blacklist.

Roskomnadzor blocked Cointelegraph shortly in 2019 after being on a two-year blocked list for no effect, due to news about crypto.